OPINION: We don’t want adults like Ryan in Washington anymore

Less than six years ago, The New Yorker magazine warned its readers about the rise of a young policy wonk, an ominous figure with a head full of Austrian economists and Ayn Rand. The worrisome tone of the profile was evident in the subhead: “How Paul Ryan captured the GOP.”

Ryan, the House speaker, announced his retirement from Congress at age 48 on Wednesday. Preceding him to the exit was the numbers-crunching, economics-guided GOP he had supposedly molded in his image only a few years ago.

Trump will be blamed, naturally. But Trump is a symptom, not a cause. Paul Ryan is a serious man in an unserious time. American culture is undergoing a transformation. It is jettisoning adulthood.

Ryan is the latest Republican (Trey Gowdy, Jeff Flake) to be muscled out of the party by the populist forces growing stronger since Trump’s nomination. Ryan is the latest in an even longer line of political figures of both parties who were drawn to politics by ideas only to find themselves at the mercy of forces that are more powerful than spreadsheets and footnoted policy papers.

The rise of youth culture in the mid-20th century remains one of the most important social developments in American history. Since its ascendancy, the worst mistake a politician can make is to be uncool. Every losing presidential candidate since 1980 was the least “cool” candidate in the race:

The combination of youth culture and 21st century technology has made attention the currency of the moment. Sober, calm and judicious are out. Loud, obnoxious and incessant are in. The social dynamics of the nursery are governing our political discourse.

Through February of 2016, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz had spent a combined $159 million on campaign advertising to Trump’s paltry $10 million, an analysis by SMG Delta showed. But Trump overwhelmed them with $1.9 billion in free media coverage (vs. $731 million for Bush, Rubio and Cruz).

Policy — the details of what government laws and regulations actually do — is little covered even in the nation’s major print publications because that’s not where the eyeballs are. The Washington Post and The New York Times still do a lot of great, in-depth journalism, but their subscriptions didn’t rebound because of it. They rebounded because of the steady stream of clickbait coverage they’ve given to the endless scandals of the Trump administration.

When George W. Bush picked Dick Cheney as his running mate, reporters said it was smart because Cheney had “gravitas.” Paul Ryan has gravitas. He’s retiring at age 48. Bernie Sanders, who has none, is contemplating, at age 76, another White House run.

In 1954, populist demagogue Sen. Joe McCarthy was brought down with one immortal line delivered by a lawyer for the Army, Joseph Welch: “Have you no sense of decency?”

In 2018, a culture with little use for decency is ending the careers of numerous politicians who have too much dignity to cut a mock rap video, call their opponents names, or act like every proposal by the opposing party represents the end of the republic.

Sober, dignified figures such as Paul Ryan are at a double disadvantage in this new era. Nice guys, they don’t play the power politics game all that well. To paraphrase Sean Connery in The Untouchables, they bring pie charts to a knife fight.

And they can’t hope to compete with more flamboyant figures for the attention that breathes life and money into political campaigns.

Andrew Cline is president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank in New Hampshire. Follow him on Twitter: @DrewHampshire